The following is a guest contributed post from Jonathon Dreyer, director of cloud and mobile solutions marketing at Nuance.

I’ve worked in the healthcare industry for many years, and the ways consumer trends shape health IT design have always interested me. Working for a company that represents both industries is an exciting place to be, but has also underlined the fact that there are fundamental differences between the two types of technologies. And, when it comes to clinical speech recognition, accuracy and personal health information security are extremely important.

Curely App Allows Patients To Access Physicians From Around The Globe
In March of 2015, the Association of American Medical Colleges took a look at our nation’s population and predicted that by 2025 the United States will have a shortage of between 46,000 to 90,000 physicians. The shortage is already apparent in many states, or in many areas of states. According to a June report by Kaiser Family Foundation, Connecticut only has 15% of their needs met, with Alaska and Rhone Island coming in next at only 35%.Read the full story

Infants are some of the most fragile patients found in any hospital, yet most hospitals cannot afford to have a neonatal intensive care specialist on hand 24 hours a day. It is for this reason that the neonatal team at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles performed a test of robotic bedside rounds for infants with mild to moderate disease.

According to a recent in-depth profile by News Medical, the robots used for these neonatal rounds were able to capture real-time audio and video for sharing between a remote neonatal specialist and infant. During the study, there was no significant difference in patient outcomes and parents reported a high level of satisfaction for the monitoring of their infants.

In fact, of the 45% of parents who completed a survey at the end of the study, 100% said they would be comfortable with their infant being treated by an offsite neonatal specialist in the future.

According to USA Today, a new law allows patients to order blood tests without the need for getting doctors involved.

“It represents a significant step towards Holmes’ ultimate mission: giving consumers control over monitoring their health via inexpensive and comparatively painless tests,” the report notes.Read the full story

Whether speaking of patients in rural areas, or patients with health or mobility concerns that make it difficult for them to leave the house, telemedicine provides a convenient alternative to heading to the doctor. That being said, there are many health conditions that are not able to be addressed remotely, such as eye related health concerns.

It is for this reason that D-EYE partnered with TreVia to make diagnosing and treating eye disorders such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and macular degeneration a reality from remote locations. TreVia provides the HIPPA-compliant cloud technology, while D-EYE provides the advanced portable retina imaging system.

In what the partners describe as an effort to help healthcare providers comply with upcoming fraud-liability standards and protect their patients, Experian Health tells mHealthWatch that it has joined forces with AxiaMed and Ingenico Group to deliver a new solution on digital payments.

In short, the EMV-compliant device allows hospitals and medical providers to protect patient financial information as well as reduce their liability should a fraudulent transaction occur.Read the full story